Posts Tagged «Gabe Newell»

The announcement we’ve all been anxiously awaiting for the better part of a year — the reveal of Valve’s Steam Box — has arrived. It turns out Valve’s purportedly revolutionary games console is, it would seem, a normal PC. Are you ready for a new era of gaming?

In an interesting little nugget of computing and gaming history, it turns out that none other than Gabe Newell — then a bigwig member of Microsoft’s Windows team — was one of the reasons that Windows became a viable gaming platform, and probably why Windows went on to completely monopolize the consumer computing market for almost two decades. We raise this point now, of course, as Valve will soon be faced with making its own SteamOS and Steam Box viable for gaming.

Last week, Valve teased an official announcement regarding its plan to bring Steam to the living room. We all presumed this would be the Steam Box we heard so much in the past year. It turns out Valve broke the announcement into three parts. The company didn’t announce the console, but did announce the console’s operating system, SteamOS.

Speaking at LinuxCon this week, vaunted PC hero Gabe Newell once again brought Linux gaming back to the forefront, as he is wont to do. Unlike Gabe Newell, though, he said that Valve will reveal details about some Linux gaming hardware next week. Most likely, he is referring to the Steam Box.

When Valve announced its Steam Box in January at CES, we saw what was supposed to be a prototype of the console. Produced by Xi3, the little box shown was a very small form-factor PC, able to fit in the palm of your hand. Xi3 recently opened up pre-orders for that box, dubbed the Piston, but also stated it’s not a Steam Box. Hypothetically speaking, though, no one has any idea what constitutes a Steam Box.

At the 2013 D.I.C.E Summit this year, Valve honcho Gabe Newell delivered a 30-minute keynote speech that, aside from his usual rant about Linux and Windows 8, revealed some interesting ideology held by Valve.

Valve is gunning for the television with their Steam Box concept, and it isn’t afraid of Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo. Sure, those companies traditionally have had a hold on the gaming sphere, but that’s a known quantity. The dark horse here is Apple, and Valve’s managing director Gabe Newell is well aware that they’re the company to worry about the most.

As CES 2013 rolls on, more details about Valve’s Steam Box emerge. In a recent interview, Valve honcho Gabe Newell revealed some juicy details about the Steam Box, painting the most concrete picture of the unit that we have so far.

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